The world is getting more and more globalized. In order to communicate with foreigners, it is inevitable to understand the different values of other cultures so that we may avoid the conflict between us. Education is one of the most important methods of enhancing the understanding of different values of other cultures. I would like to think about the current condition and effectiveness of “Education for International Understanding” in Japan.
This concept “Education for International Understanding” is firstly advocated by UNESCO in 1974. It includes the concept of peace education, understanding of each country, human-rights education, and understanding of UN. Its purpose is not only about the education of understanding of other countries and its culture but also to broaden people’s international scope and cultivate their sense of unity as global citizen, world interdependency, and awareness toward peace/human-rights/environment.

In Japan, this concept is gradually advocated from end of 1980s and started to introduce it in several classes such as integrated study period (総合的な学習の時間), moral study, and society study. According to Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科学省), they create a consultative body on education for international understanding every year so that they can talk about that issue deeply. Moreover, for example, they choose a core school and implement the development of classes and workshops for promoting the International education by cooperating with NPO. They are also increasing the opportunity to communicate with foreigners or implementing the study abroad program for students so that they can really have opportunities to communicate with people who have different background.

These are the brief definition and actual condition of education for international understanding. Now, I would like to give my opinion toward this issue. I do also think that this education would be really important to avoid the collision of different cultures. In my opinion, “actual communication” is a crucial point from my experience. Many Japanese people tend to hesitate to communicate with foreigners because they may have totally different way of thinking or maybe Japanese students have no confidence of speaking English. However, it is not good to have a stereotype about them because you do not even communicate with them. Also, language is important method but having motivation and curiosity may be more important in communication. In my view, Japan is accepting this kind of education more than before but still there are less opportunities of “actual communication” for students. Students should think and learn by themselves by having more curiosity and schools should give more opportunities and environments to them so it would be easier for students to achieve it. Therefore, increasing opportunity of “actual communication” with people who have different culture should be enhanced more and more in Japanese education.

by  Mao Shukunobe

The number of international marriages in Japan continues to grow in recent years. Most of the cases are Japanese men marry South East Asian women particularly Chinese and Filipinas. Women of these two countries are thought most suitable to marry with for they are caring, friendly and hard working.

A characteristic of their marriage is that middle-aged Japanese men marry to Chinese or Filipinas in their 2os or 30s. These women are eager to marry Japanese men because they think Japanese are economically rich. Japanese men marry to them because they are worried about their old age having nobody to take care of them or, Japanese agricultural areas are now decreasing in population, so they cannot find their spouse in their local areas. Both sides are hoping to have a better life by marrying to each other.

However, their marriage usually ends with divorce. The first biggest cause is the lack of communication between husband and wife. Since foreign wife usually cannot speak good Japanese, couples cannot understand each other. Foreign wife gradually start to feel isolated both at home and outside home, so they wind up escaping from Japan to go back to their country.

Another cause is money trouble. Foreign wife come to Japan in search for a better wealthy life but after they got married, what they have found was Japanese husband were not rich enough to support them and actually they are having a hard time making ends meet. Even though they try to find jobs to make up for the deficits in their living expenses, it is still difficult for them to adapt themselves to work as institutions don’t provide proper job training for them.

Like this, foreign wives in Japan are under severe condition. As Japan is facing decreasing birthrate and aging population, international marriage will be inseparably related to the future of Japanese society. But still, Japanese systems for immigrants including marriage immigrants are very exclusive and not friendly. Japan should build up systems to support them by providing, for example, job training or language training to make it easy for them to adapt to Japanese society. Thinking of the future, immigrants will contribute a lot to Japanese economy in terms of their productivity and labor force, so fixing up immigrants friendly system will surely bring benefit to Japan in the long run.

by Eri Kobayashi

There are lots of Nikkei people and also there are many problem related to them in Japanese society. I do clearly remember a certain sentence written by a girl whose parents are Nikkei 2^nd or 3^rd generation. Judging from her sentence, most of children like her feel that they are “nationless” people. In other words, they have mental conflict in finding their identity.

Through imaging and thinking and know their feeling and problems they are facing now, I found one of the essence of these problem. This is my opinion, but it might be fact that they cannot take “Japan” as a place which is comfortable for them to live and there are social structures which make them live with uncomfortable in Japanese society.

I want to mention that there is definitely non-decent society for them to live in japan.

I encountered a documentary video which described about the absurd situation happened among the Nikkei people and their children. In 2009, economy crisis emerged remarkably and huge number of Nikkei people who had worked as non-regular worker hired. Of course, that has not been happened within Nikkei people, but it is obvious that the first target to be fired were almost Nikkei people.

And what I saw on the video was that enormous children whose parents were fired could not go to school because their parents cannot pay for school expenses.

There are just one of the problem but I want to argue the essence of this problem had been rooted in Japanese society, and moreover there was already problem when Japanese government decided 入管法改正 in 1990. After this amendment, Japan accepted many Nikkei people from Brazil and Peru, and there was government’s intention in order to get a lot of labor to supplement the shortage of labor in Japan at that time.

However, it seems that Japanese government has treated them as mere “labor”. Japan didn’t prepare that how we Japan accept Nikkei people and their children to Japanese society. For example, most of their children cannot speak Japanese at first, so they go to Brazilian or Peruvian school. However, this kind of school is not admitted as public school, so these schools cannot get grants. Needless to say, it is quite hard for them to manage and maintain school and the school expense naturally goes expensive.

There are many reasons of problem Nikkei people face right now. The reality that I said above through seeing the video is also  it is true that Japanese society has neglecting its duty to think and face sincerely these issues, as a result of it, there is a non-decent society for Nikkei People and their children.

This is what I think through this issue.

By Misa Kono

As a popular boom in Korean drama has been spreading over Japan, did our view toward Korean Japanese meet any changes?

Korean Japanese are everywhere in Japan and it is not rare that you get to know them or friends of yours are Korean Japanese. General images about Korean Japanese are just like in the movies, “パッチギ” and “Go”, we tend to think Korean Japanese are liable to discrimination and they are hostile to Japanese society considering the facts happened in the past history. Some Koreans Japanese I knew before, they seemed they didn’t want to announce to the society that they were actually Korean Japanese, and rather than doing that, they liked to merge with Japanese society as Japanese.

But after the Korean Drama boom arrived in Japan, I feel people started to look at matters of Korea in a different way. More and more Japanese has come to want to know about Korean people and its culture. Many of those Korean Drama fans study Korean language, travel to Korea, or some even want to live in Korea for some time. Like this, the booming in Korean drama became a bridge to connect Japanese and Korean in a better way.

Reflecting the changes I said the above, I came across with the funny scene at a fast food shop, a person who sat next to my table was talking about her child, she said to her friend that “ I am wondering if I should talk with my son in Japanese or in Korean, my husband wouldn’t understand Korean so it should be better I talk with him in Japanese..” and her friend said, “that’s so cool. I wish I could speak Korean just like in the drama..so that I could make my kids a bilingual..”  Then, I thought Korean Japanese today are more open to their identity. They don’t dislike the fact they are Korean Japanese, but they live with that. And Japanese people accept them as Korean Japanese.

Korean drama boom obviously kept the distance between Japanese and Korean Japanese closer. I think the boom gave Japanese people an impression to feel Korean Japanese familiar to them. This is a good thing, but the pop culture boom always make people blind that they can only see good aspects of both sides. We still have to remember what Korean Japanese really overcame in Japanese society, their struggles. We cannot ignore the controversial issues over Korean Japanese and I believe the boom is a good start for Japanese society as a whole to welcome and accept Korean Japanese.

by Eri Kobayashi

As a child I had more opportunities to be exposed to foreigners, because I took English lessons from a young age and had ability to talk to them. But there is one certain group I never got close. It is Filipino people and now I want to think back why it was so.

I spent my childhood in a small city called Maizuru, in Kyoto. It is a small port town, the only attraction being fishery. The population consists of mostly elderly people, but also men in national defence force. Many young people do not find it exciting to live there and there are not too many job opportunities. So, there are many ‘snack bars’ for men and many Philippine girls working there. Japanese people living in Maizuru quickly assumed that she works for a snack bar when they see a Philippine girl. Also, the town did not get many foreigners from other nationalities, so the society was rather conservative. The reason that those women chose to come to Maizuru is no doubt that they found a job opportunity—demand, and also existing Filipino society that they can fall back on. I feel really bad that the demand is created because of the public service job.

When I think back, I never had or tried to have contact with Filipino people when I lived there. There was one ‘hafu’ Filipino girl in my school, but I never talked to her or felt curious about her background, probably because I heard that her mother worked at a snack bar. However, I was eager to talk to Brazilian girls and Swiss girls at school.

I guess we see people of their social status, their job and those types of ‘labels’ rather than what they are or what they think. I was aware of those labels as a child already. Still today, we label people quickly when we see them in Japan, even if their home country doesn’t mean what they are. Now that I am older and wiser, I know not to see people from a biased view point.

By Kumi Nakamura